Coronavirus has been seen in more than 30 countries. The newly
discovered virus can spread from person to person and health officials
recommend simple steps to avoid becoming infected.
So, how can you prevent spreading or catching a virus?
Avoid touching your
face, your mouth, your nose and your eyes as this is a possible route of the
virus to enter and cause infection.
If you cough or sneeze and you don’t put your hand to your mouth and you touch surfaces, the virus can survive for several hours outside the body.
Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds especially after you have been in public place, or after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing.
If soap and water are not readily available, use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
So it’s important that you wash your hands effectively.
How to wash your hands:
take some soap
create a lather
clean the back of your hands and in between your fingers, the end of your fingers, your thumb (germs are present around nail area and on the back of the hands). Again, your palms. Your wrist and the top of your hand again.
rinse the soap off with water
turn off the tap with a tissue to prevent cross-contamination
Hong Kong has decided to impose a
mandatory 14-day quarantine on all visitors from mainland China as it battles
to prevent the spread of a coronavirus outbreak.
The policy comes into effect on February
8, but officials refused to close the border entirely, as demanded by medical
staff who have gone on strike.
Hong Kong, which has 21 confirmed
cases and one fatality, suffered 300 deaths in the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003.
There are 24,300 confirmed coronavirus
cases and 490 deaths in mainland China.
Those figures included an additional
4,000 cases and 65 deaths on February 4.
The new virus has spread overseas,
with 25 nations confirming a total of 191 cases, although there has so far been
only one death, in the Philippines.
The WHO has declared the outbreak a
global health emergency. On February 5, WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
appealed for $675 million to fund a three-month response plan.
The coronavirus causes severe acute respiratory infection and symptoms usually start with a fever, followed by a dry cough. Most people infected are likely to fully recover – just as they would from a flu.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam
said anyone arriving from the mainland, including foreigners, would be quarantined
for 14 days from February 8, although she did not say how this would be
imposed.
It is unclear where the quarantines
would take place or whether Hong Kong residents could spend the time at home.
Tens of thousands of people arrived
from the mainland on February 4.
Carrie Lam has not moved to close the border entirely, although thousands of
medical staff on February 5 entered the third day of their strike over the
issue and have threatened to escalate their action.
Hong Kong will, however, close the Ocean and Kai Tak cruise terminals.
Some 3,600 passengers and crew on the World Dream, docked at Kai Tak, are
being tested for the virus after three Chinese passengers who were on the ship
between January 19 and 24 tested positive after disembarking.
Hong Kong remains concerned about a repeat of the deadly Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, although the mortality rate of the new
virus is much lower than that of SARS, which was around 9.6%.
There have been massive queues for masks which are in short supply and are
selling at inflated prices.
Separately, the Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific is asking 27,000 staff to take three weeks unpaid leave over the coming months as it deals with the impact of the outbreak.
According to Japanese health authorities, at
least 10 people on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in the port of
Yokohama have tested positive for coronavirus.
Almost 300 of the 3,700 people on the cruise ship have been tested so far.
The number of infected could rise.
The checks began after an 80-year-old Hong Kong man who had been on the ship
last month fell ill with the virus.
Some 3,600 people on a second cruise ship docked in Hong Kong are also being
tested.
Chinese health authorities are stepping up efforts to control the spread of
the virus, with approximately 18 million people in the east of the country now
required to stay at home.
In Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, 11 large public venues including
sports arenas are being turned into makeshift hospitals to provide an
additional 10,000 beds for the sick. Two new hospitals have already been built
there since the outbreak started.
President Xi Jinping said China’s preventive measures were “achieving a
positive effect”, state media reported. He said China was confident and
capable of winning the war against the virus, after authorities were criticized
for their initial handling of the outbreak.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency
over the outbreak but said it did not yet constitute a “pandemic”, or
the worldwide spread of a new disease.
However, the number of cases in
China jumped by nearly 4,000 on February 4 alone to more than 24,300, with
another 65 deaths bringing the total to 490.
The new coronavirus causes severe
acute respiratory infection and symptoms usually start with a fever, followed
by a dry cough. Most people infected are likely to fully recover – just as they
would from a flu.
There is a much smaller number of
cases in countries around the globe other than China – two people outside of
mainland China have died of the disease.
The Hong Kong man believed to be the
source boarded the cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, on January 20, and
disembarked in Hong Kong on January 25. He was only later found to have tested
positive for the virus.
Officials on the cruise ship began
screening guests on February 3, and the vessel was placed under quarantine on
February 4.
Passengers and crew on the ship will
now be under quarantine for 14 days. The incubation period of the virus is
believed to be around two weeks.
All 10 cases are in those over the
age of 50 and one is in their 80s, Japanese broadcaster NHK said.
Two of them are said to be Japanese, and none are in “serious condition”, it added.
A public health emergency has been declared in
the US over the spread of the coronavirus and said it would deny entry to any
foreign nationals who have visited China in the past two weeks.
According to authorities, US citizens returning from Hubei province, where
the outbreak started, will be quarantined for two weeks.
Nearly 10,000 cases of the new virus have been confirmed, most of them in
China, since it emerged in December.
More than 100 cases have been reported outside China, in 22 countries.
On January 31, Beijing said the death toll had risen by 45 to 258 – all of
them in China and 249 in Hubei.
Earlier, it emerged that the number of new coronavirus cases worldwide had
overtaken that of the SARS epidemic, which spread to more than two dozen
countries in 2003.
There were around 8,100 cases of SARS – severe acute respiratory syndrome –
during the eight-month outbreak. In total, 774 people were killed by SARS.
On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health
emergency over the new outbreak.
WHO spokesman Chris Lindmeier warned that closing borders could in fact accelerate
its spread, with travelers entering countries unofficially.
“As we know from other scenarios,
be it Ebola or other cases, whenever people want to travel, they will. And if
the official paths are not opened, they will find unofficial paths,”
he said.
He said the best way to track the virus was at official border crossings.
In a public statement on January 31, Health Secretary Alex Azar said US
citizens returning from Hubei province would face 14 days of quarantine while
those returning from other parts of China would be allowed to monitor their own
condition for a similar period.
He told reporters: “Following the
World Health Organization decision, I have today declared that the coronavirus
represents a public health emergency in the United States.”
Citing the need to relieve pressure
on authorities, Alex Azar said that foreign nationals who had travelled in
China in the past two weeks would be denied entry to the US.
He added: “The risk of infection for Americans remains low and with these,
and our previous, actions we are working to keep the risk low.”
Another confirmed case in the US on
January 31 – in California – brought the number there to seven. Robert
Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
said 191 people were under observation for the disease.
The US announcement came as other
countries around the world scrambled to contain the spread of the new virus,
2019-nCov.
On January 31, the UK confirmed its first two cases.
Estimates by the University of Hong Kong suggest the true total number of
cases could be far higher than official figures suggest. Based on mathematical
models of the outbreak, experts there say more than 75,000 people may have been
infected in the city of Wuhan alone, where the virus first emerged.
Most cases outside China involve people who have been to Wuhan. Germany,
Japan, Vietnam, the US, Thailand and South Korea have reported person-to-person
cases – patients being infected by people who had travelled to China.
Meanwhile in Wuhan, voluntary evacuations of hundreds of foreign nationals
are under way.
Australia, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and the UK are expected to quarantine all evacuees for two weeks to monitor them for symptoms and avoid contagion.
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